The year 1530 marks the height
of the Zwinglian Reformation. It was firmly established in the leading cities
and cantons of Zürich, Bern, and Basel. It had gained a strong majority of the
people in Northern and Eastern Switzerland, and in the Grisons. It had fair
prospects of ultimate success in the whole confederacy, when its further
progress was suddenly arrested by the catastrophe of Cappel and the death of
Zwingli.

The two parties had no
conception of toleration (except in Glarus and the Grisons), but aimed at
supremacy and excluded each other wherever they had the power. They came into
open conflict in the common territories or free bailiwicks, by the forcible
attempts made there to introduce the new religion, or to prevent its
introduction. The Protestants, under the lead of Zwingli, were the aggressors,
especially in the confiscation of the rich abbey of St. Gall. They had in their
favor the right of progress and the majority of the population. But the Roman
Catholics had on their side the tradition of the past, the letter of the law,
and a majority of Cantons and of votes in the Diet, in which the people were
not directly represented. They strictly prohibited Protestant preaching within
their own jurisdiction, and even began bloody persecution. Jacob Kaiser (or
Schlosser), a Zürich minister, was seized on a preaching expedition, and
publicly burnt at the stake in the town of Schwyz (May, 1529).255 His martyrdom was the signal of war. The Protestants feared, not
without good reason, that this case was the beginning of a general persecution.

With the religious question was
closely connected the political and social question of the foreign military
service,256which Zwingli consistently opposed in the
interest of patriotism, and which the Roman Catholics defended in the interest
of wealth and fame. This was a very serious matter, as may be estimated from
the fact that, according to a statement of the French ambassador, his king had
sent, from 1512 to 1531, no less than 1,133,547 gold crowns to Switzerland, a
sum equal to four times the amount at present valuation. The pensions were the
Judas price paid by foreign sovereigns to influential Swiss for treason to
their country. In his opposition to this abuse, Zwingli was undoubtedly right,
and his view ultimately succeeded, though long after his death.257

Both parties organized for war,
which broke out in 1529, and ended in a disastrous defeat of the Protestants in
1531. Sixteen years later, the Lutheran princes suffered a similar defeat in the
Smalcaldian War against the Emperor (1547). The five Forest Cantons—Uri,
Schwyz, Unterwalden, Luzern, and Zug—formed a defensive and offensive league
(November, 1528; the preparations began in 1527), and even entered, first
secretly, then openly, into an alliance with Ferdinand Duke of Austria and King
of Bohemia and Hungary (April, 1529). This alliance with the old hereditary
enemy of Switzerland, whom their ancestors had defeated in glorious battles,
was treasonable and a step towards the split of the confederacy in two hostile
camps (which was repeated in 1846). King Ferdinand had a political and
religious interest in the division of Switzerland and fostered it. Freiburg,
Wallis, and Solothurn sided with the Catholic Cantons, and promised aid in case
of war. The Protestant Cantons, led by Zürich (which made the first step in
this direction) formed a Protestant league under the name of the Christian
co-burghery (Burgrecht) with the cities of Constance (Dec. 25, 1527),
Biel and Mühlhausen (1529), and Strassburg (Jan. 9, 1530).258

Zwingli, provoked by the burning
of Kaiser, and seeing the war clouds gathering all around, favored prompt
action, which usually secures a great advantage in critical moments. He
believed in the necessity of war; while Luther put his sole trust in the Word
of God, although he stirred up the passions of war by his writings, and had
himself the martyr’s courage to go to the stake. Zwingli was a free republican;
while Luther was a loyal monarchist. He belonged to the Cromwellian type of men
who "trust in God and keep their powder dry." In him the reformer, the statesman, and the
patriot were one. He appealed to the examples of Joshua and Gideon, forgetting
the difference between the Old and the New dispensation. "Let us be
firm," he wrote to his peace-loving friends in Bern (May 30, 1529),
"and fear not to take up arms. This peace, which some desire so much, is
not peace, but war; while the war that we call for, is not war, but peace. We
thirst for no man’s blood, but we will cut the nerves of the oligarchy. If we
shun it, the truth of the gospel and the ministers’ lives will never be secure
among us."259

Zürich was first ready for the
conflict and sent four thousand well-equipped soldiers to Cappel, a village
with a Cistercian convent, in the territory of Zürich on the frontier of the
Canton Zug.260 Smaller
detachments were located at Bremgarten, and on the frontier of Schwyz, Basel,
St. Gall. Mühlhausen furnished auxiliary troops. Bern sent five thousand men,
but with orders to act only in self-defence.

Zwingli accompanied the main
force to Cappel. "When my brethren expose their lives," he said to
the burgomaster, who wished to keep him back, "I will not remain quiet at
home. The army requires a watchful eye."
He put the halberd which he had worn as chaplain at Marignano, over his
shoulder, and mounted his horse, ready to conquer or to die for God and the
fatherland.261

He prepared excellent
instructions for the soldiers, and a plan of a campaign that should be short,
sharp, decisive, and, if possible, unbloody.

Zürich declared war June 9,
1529. But before the forces crossed the frontier of the Forest Cantons,
Landammann Aebli of Glarus, where the Catholics and Protestants worship in one
church, appeared from a visit to the hostile army as peacemaker, and prevented
a bloody collision. He was a friend of Zwingli, an enemy of the mercenary
service, and generally esteemed as a true patriot. With tears in his eyes, says
Bullinger, he entreated the Zürichers to put off the attack even for a few
hours, in the hope of bringing about an honorable peace. "Dear lords of
Zuerich, for God’s sake, prevent the division and destruction of the
confederacy." Zwingli opposed him,
and said: "My dear friend,262you will answer to God for this counsel. As long
as the enemies are in our power, they use good words; but as soon as they are
well prepared, they will not spare us."
He foresaw what actually happened after his death. Aebli replied:
"I trust in God that all will go well. Let each of us do his
best." And he departed.

Zwingli himself was not
unwilling to make peace, but only on four conditions which he sent a day after
Aebli’s appeal, in a memorandum to the Council of Zürich (June 11): 1) That the
Word of God be preached freely in the entire confederacy, but that no one be
forced to abolish the mass, the images, and other ceremonies which will fall of
themselves under the influence of scriptural preaching; 2) that all foreign
military pensions be abolished; 3) that the originators and the dispensers of
foreign pensions be punished while the armies are still in the field; 4) that
the Forest Cantons pay the cost of war preparations, and that Schwyz pay one
thousand guilders for the support of the orphans of Kaiser (Schlosser) who had
recently been burnt there as a heretic.

An admirable discipline
prevailed in the camp of Zürich, that reminds one of the Puritan army of
Cromwell. Zwingli or one of his colleagues preached daily; prayers were offered
before each meal; psalms, hymns, and national songs resounded in the tents; no
oath was heard; gambling and swearing were prohibited, and disreputable women
excluded; the only exercises were wrestling, casting stones, and military
drill. There can be little doubt that if the Zürichers had made a timely attack
upon the Catholics and carried out the plan of Zwingli, they would have gained
a complete victory and dictated the terms of peace. How long the peace would
have lasted is a different question; for behind the Forest Cantons stood
Austria, which might at any time have changed the situation.

But counsels of peace prevailed.
Bern was opposed to the offensive, and declared that if the Zürichers began the
attack, they should be left to finish it alone. The Zürichers themselves were
divided, and their military leaders (Berger and Escher) inclined to peace.

The Catholics, being assured
that they need not fear an attack from Bern, mustered courage and were enforced
by troops from Wallis and the Italian bailiwicks. They now numbered nearly
twelve thousand armed men.

The hostile armies faced each
other from Cappel and Baar, but hesitated to advance. Catholic guards would
cross over the border to be taken prisoners by the Zürichers, who had an
abundance of provision, and sent them back well fed and clothed. Or they would
place a large bucket of milk on the border line and asked the Zürichers for
bread, who supplied them richly; whereupon both parties peacefully enjoyed a
common meal, and when one took a morsel on the enemy’s side, he was reminded
not to cross the frontier. The soldiers remembered that they were Swiss
confederates, and that many of them had fought side by side on foreign
battlefields.263 "We
shall not fight," they said;, and pray God that the storm may pass away
without doing us any harm." Jacob
Sturm, the burgomaster of Strassburg, who was present as a mediator, was struck
with the manifestation of personal harmony and friendship in the midst of
organized hostility. "You are a singular people," he said;
"though disunited, you are united."

§ 43. The First Peace of Cappel. June, 1529.

After several negotiations, a
treaty of Peace was concluded June 25, 1529, between Zürich, Bern, Basel, St.
Gall, and the cities of Mühlhausen and Biel on the one hand, and the five
Catholic Cantons on the other. The deputies of Glarus, Solothurn, Schaffhausen,
Appenzell, Graubünden, Sargans, Strassburg, and Constanz acted as mediators.

The treaty was not all that
Zwingli desired, especially as regards the abolition of the pensions and the
punishment of the dispensers of pensions (wherein he was not supported by
Bern), but upon the whole it was favorable to the cause of the Reformation.

The first and most important of
the Eighteen Articles of the treaty recognizes, for the first time in Europe,
the principle of parity or legal equality of the Roman Catholic and Protestant
Churches,—a principle which twenty-six years afterwards was recognized also in
Germany (by the Augsburger Religionsfriede of 1555), but which was not
finally settled there till after the bloody baptism of the Thirty Years’ War,
in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), against which the Pope of Rome still
protests in vain. That article guarantees to the Reformed and Roman Catholic
Cantons religious freedom in the form of mutual toleration, and to the common
bailiwicks the right to decide by majority the question whether they would
remain Catholics or become Protestants.264 The treaty also provided for the payment of the expenses of the
war by the five cantons, and for an indemnity to the family of the martyred
Kaiser. The abolition of the foreign pensions was not demanded, but recommended
to the Roman Catholic Cantons. The alliance with Austria was broken. The
document which contained the treasonable treaty was cut to pieces by Aebli in
the presence of Zwingli and the army of Zürich.265

The Catholics returned to their
homes discontented. The Zürichers had reason to be thankful; still more the
Berners, who had triumphed with their policy of moderation.

Zwingli wavered between hopes
and fears for the future, but his trust was in God. He wrote (June 30) to
Conrad Som, minister at Ulm: "We have brought peace with us, which for us,
I hope, is quite honorable; for we did not go forth to shed blood.266 We have sent back our foes with a wet blanket. Their compact with
Austria was cut to pieces before mine eyes in the camp by the Landammann of
Glarus, June 26, at 11 A. M. ... God has shown again to the mighty ones that
they cannot prevail against him, and that we may gain victory without a stroke
if we hold to him."267

He gave vent to his conflicting
feelings in a poem which he composed in the camp (during the peace
negotiations), together with the music, and which became almost as popular in
Switzerland as Luther’s contemporaneous, but more powerful and more famous
"Ein feste Burg," is to this day in Germany. It breathes the same
spirit of trust in God.268

The effect of the first Peace of
Cappel was favorable to the cause of the Reformation. It had now full legal
recognition, and made progress in the Cantons and in the common territories.
But the peace did not last long. The progress emboldened the Protestants, and
embittered the Catholics.

The last two years of Zwingli
were full of anxiety, but also full of important labors. He contemplated a
political reconstruction of Switzerland, and a vast European league for the
protection and promotion of Protestant interests.

He attended the theological
Colloquy at Marburg (Sept. 29 to Oct. 3, 1529) in the hope of bringing about a
union with the German Lutherans against the common foe at Rome. But Luther
refused his hand of fellowship, and would not tolerate a theory of the Lord’s
Supper which he regarded as a dangerous heresy.270

While at Marburg, Zwingli made
the personal acquaintance of the Landgraf, Philip of Hesse, and the fugitive
Duke Ulrich of Würtemberg, who admired him, and sympathized with his theology
as far as they understood it, but cared still more for their personal and
political interests. He conceived with them the bold idea of a
politico-ecclesiastical alliance of Protestant states and cities for the
protection of religious liberty against the combined forces of the papacy and
the empire which threatened that liberty. Charles V. had made peace with
Clement VII., June 29, 1529, and crossed the Alps in May, 1530, on his way to
the Diet of Augsburg, offering to the Protestants bread with one hand, but
concealing a stone in the other. Zwingli carried on a secret correspondence
with Philip of Hesse from April 22, 1529, till Sept. 10, 1531.271 He saw in the Roman empire the natural ally of the Roman papacy,
and would not have lamented its overthrow.272 Being a republican Swiss, he did not share in the loyal reverence
of the monarchical Germans for their emperor. But all he could reasonably aim
at was to curb the dangerous power of the emperor by strengthening the
Protestant alliance. Further he did not go.273

He tried to draw into this
alliance the republic of Venice and the kingdom of France, but failed. These
powers were jealous of the grasping ambition of the house of Habsburg, but had
no sympathy with evangelical reform. Francis I. was persecuting the Protestants
at that very time in his own country.

It is dangerous to involve
religion in entangling political alliances. Christ and the Apostles kept aloof
from secular complications, and confined themselves to preaching the ethics of
politics. Zwingli, with the best intentions, overstepped the line of his proper
calling, and was doomed to bitter disappointment. Even Philip of Hesse, who
pushed him into this net, grew cool, and joined the Lutheran League of Smalcald
(1530), which would have nothing to do with the Protestants of Switzerland.

§ 45. Zwingli’s Last Theological Labors. His Confessions of Faith.

During these fruitless political
negotiations Zwingli never lost sight of his spiritual vocation. He preached
and wrote incessantly; he helped the reform movement in every direction; he
attended synods at Frauenfeld (May, 1530), at St. Gall (December, 1530), and
Toggenburg (April, 1531); he promoted the organization and discipline of the
Reformed churches, and developed great activity as an author. Some of his most
important theological works—a commentary on the prophecies of Isaiah and
Jeremiah, his treatise on Divine Providence, and two Confessions of
Faith—belong to the last two years of his life.

He embraced the opportunity
offered by the Diet of Augsburg to send a printed Confession of Faith to
Charles V., July 8, 1530.274 But it
was treated with contempt, and not even laid before the Diet. Dr. Eck wrote a
hasty reply, and denounced Zwingli as a man who did his best to destroy
religion in Switzerland, and to incite the people to rebellion.275 The Lutherans were anxious to conciliate the emperor, and
repudiated all contact with Zwinglians and Anabaptists.276

A few months before his death
(July, 1531) he wrote, at the request of his friend Maigret, the French
ambassador at Zürich, a similar Confession addressed to King Francis I., to
whom he had previously dedicated his "Commentary on the True and False
Religion" (1524).277 In this
Confession he discusses some of the chief points of controversy,—God and his
Worship, the Person of Christ, Purgatory, the Real Presence, the Virtue of the
Sacraments, the Civil Power, Remission of Sin, Faith and Good Works, Eternal
Life,—and added an Appendix on the Eucharist and the Mass. He explains
apologetically and polemically his doctrinal position in distinction from the
Romanists, Lutherans, and Anabaptists. He begins with God as the ultimate
ground of faith and only object of worship, and closes with an exhortation to
the king to give the gospel free course in his kingdom. In the section on
Eternal Life he expresses more strongly than ever his confident hope of meeting
in heaven not only the saints of the Old and the New Dispensation from Adam
down to the Apostles, but also the good and true and noble men of all nations
and generations.278

This liberal extension of
Christ’s kingdom and Christ’s salvation beyond the limits of the visible
Church, although directly opposed to the traditional belief of the necessity of
water baptism for salvation, was not altogether new. Justin Martyr, Origen, and
other Greek fathers saw in the scattered truths of the heathen poets and
philosophers the traces of the pre-Christian revelation of the Logos, and in
the philosophy of the Greeks a schoolmaster to lead them to Christ. The
humanists of the school of Erasmus recognized a secondary inspiration in the
classical writings, and felt tempted to pray: "Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis." Zwingli was a humanist, but he had no
sympathy with Pelagianism. On the contrary, as we have shown previously, he
traced salvation to God’s sovereign grace, which is independent of ordinary
means, and he first made a clear distinction between the visible and the
invisible Church. He did not intend, as he has been often misunderstood, to
assert the possibility of salvation without Christ. "Let no one
think," he wrote to Urbanus Rhegius (a preacher at Augsburg), "that I
lower Christ; for whoever comes to God comes to him through Christ .... The
word, ’He who believeth not will be condemned,’ applies only to those who can
hear the gospel, but not to children and heathen .... I openly confess that all
infants are saved by Christ, since grace extends as far as sin. Whoever is born
is saved by Christ from the curse of original sin. If he comes to the knowledge
of the law and does the works of the law (Rom. 2:14, 26), he gives evidence of
his election. As Christians we have great advantages by the knowledge of the
gospel." He refers to the case of
Cornelius, who was pious before his baptism; and to the teaching of Paul, who
made the circumcision of the heart, and not the circumcision of the flesh, the
criterion of the true Israelite (Rom. 2:28, 29).279

The Confession to Francis I. was
the last work of Zwingli. It was written three months before his death, and
published five years later (1536) by Bullinger, who calls it his "swan
song." The manuscript is preserved
in the National Library of Paris, but it is doubtful whether the king of France
ever saw it. Calvin dedicated to him his Institutes, with a most
eloquent preface, but with no better success. Charles V. and Francis I. were as
deaf to such appeals as the emperors of heathen Rome were to the Apologies of
Justin Martyr and Tertullian. Had Francis listened to the Swiss Reformers, the
history of France might have taken a different course.

The political situation of
Switzerland grew more and more critical. The treaty of peace was differently
understood. The Forest Cantons did not mean to tolerate Protestantism in their
own territory, and insulted the Reformed preachers; nor would they concede to
the local communities in the bailiwicks (St. Gall, Toggenburg, Thurgau, the
Rheinthal) the right to introduce the Reformation by a majority vote; while the
Zürichers insisted upon both, and yet they probibited the celebration of the
mass in their own city and district. The Roman Catholic Cantons made new
disloyal approaches to Austria, and sent a deputation to Charles V. at Augsburg
which was very honorably received. The fugitive abbot of St. Gall also appeared
with an appeal for aid to his restoration. The Zürichers were no less to blame
for seeking the foreign aid of Hesse, Venice, and France. Bitter charges and
counter-charges were made at the meetings of the Swiss Diet.280

The crisis was aggravated by an
international difficulty. Graubünden sent deputies to the Diet with an appeal
for aid against the Chatelan of Musso and the invasion of the Valtellina by
Spanish troops. The Reformed Cantons favored co-operation, the Roman Catholic
Cantons refused it. The expedition succeeded, the castle of Musso was
demolished, and the Grisons took possession of the Valtellina (1530–32).

Zwingli saw no solution of the
problem except in an honest, open war, or a division of the bailiwicks among
the Cantons according to population, claiming two-thirds for Zürich and Bern.
These bailiwicks were, as already remarked, the chief bone of contention. But
Bern advocated, instead of war, a blockade of the Forest Cantons. This was
apparently a milder though actually a more cruel course. The Waldstätters in
their mountain homes were to be cut off from all supplies of grain, wine, salt,
iron, and steel, for which they depended on their richer Protestant neighbors.281 Zwingli protested. "If you have a right," he said in the
pulpit, "to starve the Five Cantons to death, you have a right to attack
them in open war. They will now attack you with the courage of desperation." He foresaw the disastrous result. But his
protest was in vain. Zürich yielded to the counsel of Bern, which was adopted
by the Protestant deputies, May 15, 1531.

The decision of the blockade was
communicated to the Forest Cantons, and vigorously executed, Zürich taking the
lead. All supplies of provision from Zürich and Bern and even from the
bailiwicks of St. Gall, Toggenburg, Sargans, and the Rheinthal were withheld.
The previous year had been a year of famine and of a wasting epidemic (the
sweating sickness). This year was to become one of actual starvation. Old men,
innocent women and children were to suffer with the guilty. The cattle was
deprived of salt. The Waldstätters were driven to desperation. Their own
confederates refused them the daily bread, forgetful of the Christian precept,
"If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him to drink; for in
so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head. Be not overcome with
evil, but overcome evil with good" (Rom. 12:20, 21).

Zwingli spent the last months
before his death in anxiety and fear. His counsel had been rejected, and yet he
was blamed for all these troubles. He had not a few enemies in Zürich, who
undermined his influence, and inclined more and more to the passive policy of
Bern. Under these circumstances, he resolved to withdraw from the public
service. On the 26th of July he appeared before the Great Council, and
declared, "Eleven years have I preached to you the gospel, and faithfully
warned you against the dangers which threaten the confederacy if the Five
Cantons—that is, those who hate the gospel and live on foreign pensions—are
allowed to gain the mastery. But you do not heed my voice, and continue to
elect members who sympathize with the enemies of the gospel. And yet ye make me
responsible for all this misfortune. Well, I herewith resign, and shall
elsewhere seek my support."

He left the hall with tears. His
resignation was rejected and withdrawn. After three days he appeared again
before the Great Council, and declared that in view of their promise of
improvement he would stand by them till death, and do his best, with God’s
help. He tried to persuade the Bernese delegates at a meeting in Bremgarten in
the house of his friend, Henry Bullinger, to energetic action, but in vain. "May
God protect you, dear Henry; remain faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ and his
Church."

These were the last words he
spoke to his worthy successor. As he left, a mysterious personage, clothed in a
snow-white robe, suddenly appeared, and after frightening the guards at the
gate plunged into the water, and vanished. He had a strong foreboding of an
approaching calamity, and did not expect to survive it. Halley’s comet, which
returns every seventy-six years, appeared in the skies from the middle of
August to the 3d of September, burning like the fire of a furnace, and pointing
southward with its immense tail of pale yellow color. Zwingli saw in it the
sign of war and of his own death. He said to a friend in the graveyard of the
minster (Aug. 10), as he gazed at the ominous star, "It will cost the life
of many an honorable man and my own. The truth and the Church will suffer, but
Christ will never forsake us."282 Vadian of St. Gall likewise regarded the comet as a messenger of
God’s wrath; and the famous Theophrastus, who was at that time in St. Gall,
declared that it foreboded great bloodshed and the death of illustrious men. It
was then the universal opinion, shared also by Luther and Melanchthon, that
comets, meteors, and eclipses were fireballs of an angry God. A frantic woman
near Zürich saw blood springing from the earth all around her, and rushed into
the street with the cry, "Murder, murder!" The atmosphere was filled with apprehensions of war and
bloodshed. The blockade was continued, and all attempts at a compromise failed.

The Forest Cantons had only one
course to pursue. The law of self-preservation drove them to open war. It was
forced upon them as a duty. Fired by indignation against the starvation policy
of their enemies, and inspired by love for their own families, the Waldstätters
promptly organized an army of eight thousand men, and marched to the frontier
of Zürich between Zug and Cappel, Oct. 9, 1531.

The news brought consternation
and terror to the Zürichers. The best opportunity had passed. Discontent and
dissension paralyzed vigorous action. Frightful omens demoralized the people.
Zürich, which two years before might easily have equipped an army of five
thousand, could now hardly collect fifteen hundred men against the triple force
of the enemy, who had the additional advantage of fighting for life and home.

Zwingli would not forsake his
flock in this extreme danger. He mounted his horse to accompany the little army
to the battlefield with the presentiment that he would never return. The horse
started back, like the horse of Napoleon when he was about to cross the Niemen.
Many regarded this as a bad omen; but Zwingli mastered the animal, applied the
spur, and rode to Cappel, determined to live or to die with the cause of the
Reformation.

The battle raged several hours
in the afternoon of the eleventh of October, and was conducted by weapons and
stones, after the manner of the Swiss, and with much bravery on both sides.
After a stubborn resistance, the Zürichers were routed, and lost the flower of
their citizens, over five hundred men, including seven members of the Small
Council, nineteen members of the Great Council of the Two Hundred, and several
pastors who had marched at the head of their flocks.283

Zwingli himself died on the
battlefield, in the prime of manhood, aged forty-seven years, nine months, and
eleven days, and with him his brother-in-law, his stepson, his son-in-law, and
his best friends. He made no use of his weapons, but contented himself with
cheering the soldiers.284 "Brave men," he said (according to Bullinger),
"fear not! Though we must suffer,
our cause is good. Commend your souls to God: he can take care of us and ours.
His will be done."

Soon after the battle had begun,
he stooped down to console a dying soldier, when a stone was hurled against his
head by one of the Waldstätters and prostrated him to the ground. Rising again,
he received several other blows, and a thrust from a lance. Once more he
uplifted his head, and, looking at the blood trickling from his wounds, he
exclaimed: What matters this
misfortune? They may kill the body, but
they cannot kill the soul." These
were his last words.285

He lay for some time on his back
under a pear-tree (called the Zwingli-Baum) in a meadow, his hands folded as in
prayer, and his eyes steadfastly turned to heaven.286

The stragglers of the victorious
army pounced like hungry vultures upon the wounded and dying. Two of them asked
Zwingli to confess to a priest, or to call upon the dear saints for their
intercession. He shook his head twice, and kept his eyes still fixed on the
heavens above. Then Captain Vokinger of Unterwalden, one of the foreign
mercenaries, against whom the Reformer had so often lifted his voice,
recognized him by the torch-light, and killed him with the, sword, exclaiming,
"Die, obstinate heretic."287

There he lay during the night.
On the next morning the people gathered around the dead, and began to realize
the extent of the victory. Everybody wanted to see Zwingli. Chaplain Stocker of
Zug, who knew him well, made the remark that his face had the same fresh and
vigorous expression as when he kindled his hearers with the fire of eloquence
from the pulpit. Hans Schönbrunner, an ex-canon of Fraumünster in Zürich, as he
passed the corpse of the Reformer, with Chaplain Stocker, burst into tears, and
said, "Whatever may have been thy faith, thou hast been an honest patriot.
May God forgive thy sins."288 He voiced the sentiment of the better class of Catholics.

But the fanatics and foreign
mercenaries would not even spare the dead. They decreed that his body should be
quartered for treason and then burnt for heresy, according to the Roman and
imperial law. The sheriff of Luzern executed the barbarous sentence. Zwingli’s
ashes were mingled with the ashes of swine, and scattered to the four winds of
heaven.289

The news of the disaster at
Cappel spread terror among the citizens of Zürich. "Then," says
Bullinger, "arose a loud and horrible cry of lamentation and tears,
bewailing and groaning."

On no one fell the sudden stroke
with heavier weight than on the innocent widow of Zwingli: she had lost, on the
same day, her husband, a son, a brother, a son-in-law, a brother-in-law, and
her most intimate friends. She remained alone with her weeping little children,
and submitted in pious resignation to the mysterious will of God. History is
silent about her grief; but it has been vividly and touchingly described in the
Zürich dialect by Martin Usteri in a poem for the tercentenary Reformation
festival in Zürich (1819).290

Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor,
took the afflicted widow into his house, and treated her as a member of his
family. She survived her husband seven years, and died in peace.

A few steps from the pear-tree
where Zwingli breathed his last, on a slight elevation, in view of the old
church and abbey of Cappel, of the Rigi, Pilatus, and the more distant
snow-capped Alps, there arises a plain granite monument, erected in 1838,
mainly by the exertions of Pastor Esslinger, with suitable Latin and German
inscriptions.291

A few weeks after Zwingli, his
friend Oecolampadius died peacefully in his home at Basel (Nov. 24, 1531). The
enemies spread the rumor that he had committed suicide. They deemed it
impossible that an arch-heretic could die a natural death.292

§ 48. Reflections on the Disaster at Cappel.

We need not wonder that the
religious and political enemies of Zwingli interpreted the catastrophe at
Cappel as a signal judgment of God and a punishment for heresy. It is the
tendency of superstition in all ages to connect misfortune with a particular
sin. Such an uncharitable interpretation of Providence is condemned by the
example of Job, the fate of prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and the express
rebuke of the disciples by our Saviour in the case of the man born blind (John
9:31). But it is found only too often among Christians. It is painful to record
that Luther, the great champion of the liberty of conscience, under the
influence of his mediaeval training, and unmindful of the adage, De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, surpassed even the most
virulent Catholics in the abuse of Zwingli after his death. It is a sad
commentary on the narrowness and intolerance of the Reformer.293

The faithful friends of
evangelical freedom and progress in Switzerland revered Zwingli as a martyr,
and regarded the defeat at Cappel as a wholesome discipline or a blessing in
disguise. Bullinger voiced their sentiments. "The victory of truth,"
he wrote after the death of his teacher and friend, "stands alone in God’s
power and will, and is not bound to person or time. Christ was crucified, and
his enemies imagined they had conquered; but forty years afterwards Christ’s
victory became manifest in the destruction of Jerusalem. The truth conquers
through tribulation and trial. The strength of the Christians is shown in
weakness. Therefore, beloved brethren in Germany, take no offence at our
defeat, but persevere in the Word of God, which has always won the victory,
though in its defence the holy prophets, apostles, and martyrs suffered
persecution and death. Blessed are those who die in the Lord. Victory will
follow in time. A thousand years before the eyes of the Lord are but as one
day. He, too, is victorious who suffers and dies for the sake of truth.294

It is vain to speculate on mere
possibilities. But it is more than probable that a victory of the Protestants,
at that time would have been in the end more injurious to their cause than
defeat. The Zürichers would have forced the Reformation upon the Forest Cantons
and all the bailiwicks, and would thereby have provoked a reaction which, with
the aid of Austria and Spain and the counter-Reformation of the papacy, might
have ended in the destruction of Protestantism, as it actually did in the
Italian dependencies of Switzerland and the Grisons, in Italy, Spain, and
Bohemia.

It was evidently the will of
Providence that in Switzerland, as well as in Germany, both Churches, the Roman
Catholic and the Evangelical, should co-exist, and live in mutual toleration
and useful rivalry for a long time to come.

We must judge past events in the
light of subsequent events and final results. "By their fruits ye shall
know them."

The death of Zwingli is a heroic
tragedy. He died for God and his country. He was a martyr of religious liberty
and of the independence of Switzerland. He was right in his aim to secure the
freedom of preaching in all the Cantons and bailiwicks, and to abolish the
military pensions which made the Swiss tributary to foreign masters. But he had
no right to coërce the Catholics and to appeal to the sword. He was mistaken in
the means, and he anticipated the proper time. It took nearly three centuries
before these reforms could be executed.

In 1847 the civil war in
Switzerland was renewed in a different shape and under different conditions.
The same Forest Cantons which had combined against the Reformation and for the
foreign pensions, and had appealed to the aid of Austria, formed a confederacy
within the confederacy (Sonderbund) against modern political
liberalism, and again entered into an alliance with Austria; but at this time
they were defeated by the federal troops under the wise leadership of General
Dufour of Geneva, with very little bloodshed.295 In the year 1848 while the revolution raged in other countries,
the Swiss Diet quickly remodelled the constitution, and transformed the loose
confederacy of independent Cantons into a federal union, after the model of the
United States, with a representation of the people (in the Nationalrath) and a central government,
acting directly upon the people. The federal constitution of 1848 guaranteed
"the free exercise of public worship to the recognized Confessions" (i.e.
the Roman Catholic and Reformed); the Revised Constitution of 1874 extended
this freedom, within the limits of morality and public safety, to all other
denominations; only the order of the Jesuits was excluded, for political
reasons.

This liberty goes much further
than Zwingli’s plan, who would have excluded heretical sects. There are now, on
the one hand, Protestant churches at Luzern, Baar, Brunnen, in the very heart
of the Five Cantons (besides the numerous Anglican Episcopal, Scotch
Presbyterian, and other services in all the Swiss summer resorts); and on the
other hand, Roman Catholic churches in Zürich, Bern, Basel, Geneva, where the
mass was formerly rigidly prohibited.

As regards the foreign military
service which had a tendency to denationalize the Swiss, Zwingli’s theory has
completely triumphed. The only relic of that service is the hundred Swiss
guards, who, with their picturesque mediaeval uniform, guard the pope and the
Vatican. They are mostly natives of the Five Forest Cantons.

Thus history explains and
rectifies itself, and fulfils its promises.

NOTES.

There is a striking
correspondence between the constitution of the old Swiss Diet and the
constitution of the old American Confederacy, as also between the modern Swiss
constitution and that of the United States. The Swiss Diet seems to have
furnished an example to the American Confederacy, and the Congress of the
United States was a model to the Swiss Diet in 1848. The legislative power of
Switzerland is vested in the Assembly of the Confederacy (Bundesversammlung) or Congress, which consists of
the National Council (Nationalrath) or House of Representatives,
elected by the people, one out of twenty thousand,—and the Council of Cantons (Ständerath) or Senate, composed of
forty-four delegates of the twenty-two Cantons (two from each) and
corresponding to the old Diet. The executive power is exercised by the Council
of the Confederacy (Bundesrath), which consists of seven members, and is elected every
three years by the two branches of the legislature, one of them acting as
President (Bundespräsident) for the term of one year (while the President
of the United States is chosen by the people for four years, and selects his
own cabinet. Hence the head of the Swiss Confederacy has very little power for
good or evil, and is scarcely known). To the Supreme Court of the United States
corresponds the Bundesgericht, which consists of eleven judges elected by the
legislature for three years, and decides controversies between the Cantons.
Comp. Bluntschli’s Geschichte des Schweizerischen Bundesrechts, 1875; Rüttimann, Das
nordamerikanisehe Bundes-staatsrecht verglichen mit den politischen
Einrichtungen der Schweiz, Zürich, 1867–72, 2 vols.; and Sir Francis O. Adams and C. D.
Cunningham, The Swiss Confederation, French translation with notes and
additions by Henry G. Loumyer, and preface by L. Ruchonnet, Geneva, 1890.

The provisions of the Federal
Constitution of Switzerland, May 29, 1874, in regard to religion, are as
follows: —

Besides the works
already quoted, see Werner Biel’s account
of the immediate consequences of the war of Cappel in the "Archiv für
Schweizerische Reformationsgeschichte" (Rom. Cath.), vol. III. 641–680. He
was at that time the secretary of the city of Zürich. The articles of the Peace
in Hottinger, Schweizergeschichte, VII. 497 sqq., and in Bluntschli, l.c. II. 269–276
(comp. I. 332 sqq.).

Few great battles have had so
much effect upon the course of history as the little battle of Cappel. It
arrested forever the progress of the Reformation in German Switzerland, and
helped to check the progress of Protestantism in Germany. It encouraged the
Roman Catholic reaction, which soon afterwards assumed the character of a
formidable Counter-Reformation. But, while the march of Protestantism was
arrested in its original homes, it made new progress in French Switzerland, in
France, Holland, and the British Isles.

King Ferdinand of Austria gave
the messenger of the Five Cantons who brought him the news of their victory at
Cappel, fifty guilders, and forthwith informed his brother Charles V. at
Brussels of the fall of "the great heretic Zwingli," which he thought
was the first favorable event for the faith of the Catholic Church. The Emperor
lost no time to congratulate the Forest Cantons on their victory, and to
promise them his own aid and the aid of the pope, of his brother, and the
Catholic princes, in case the Protestants should persevere in their opposition.
The pope had already sent men and means for the support of his party.

The disaster of Cappel was a
prelude to the disaster of Mühlberg on the Elbe, where Charles V. defeated the
Smalcaldian League of the Lutheran princes, April 24, 1547. Luther was spared
the humiliation. The victorious emperor stood on his grave at Wittenberg, but
declined to make war upon the dead by digging up and burning his bones, as he
was advised to do by his Spanish generals.

The war of Cappel was continued
for a few weeks. Zürich rallied her forces as best she could. Bern, Basel, and
Schaffhausen sent troops, but rather reluctantly, and under the demoralizing
effect of defeat. There was a want of harmony and able leadership in the
Protestant camp. The Forest Cantons achieved another victory on the Gubel (Oct.
24), and plundered and wasted the territory of Zürich; but as the winter
approached, and as they did not receive the promised aid from Austria, they
were inclined to peace. Bern acted as mediator.

The second religious Peace (the
so-called Zweite Landsfriede) was signed Nov. 20, 1531,296between the Five Forest Cantons
and the Zürichers, on the meadows of Teynikon, near Baar, in the territory of
Zug, and confirmed Nov. 24 at Aarau by the consent of Bern, Glarus, Freiburg,
and Appenzell. It secured mutual toleration, but with a decided advantage to
the Roman Catholics.

The chief provisions of the
eight articles as regards religion were these: —

1. The Five Cantons and their
associates are to be left undisturbed in their "true, undoubted, Christian
faith"; the Zürichers and their associates may likewise retain their
"faith," but with the exception of Bremgarten, Mellingen,
Rapperschwil, Toggenburg, Gaster, and Wesen. Legal toleration or parity was
thus recognized, but in a manner which implies a slight reproach of the Reformed
creed as a departure from the truth. Mutual recrimination was again prohibited,
as in 1529.297

2. Both parties retain their
rights and liberties in the common bailiwicks: those who had accepted the new
faith might retain it; but those who preferred the old faith should be free to
return to it, and to restore the mass, and the images. In mixed congregations
the church property is to be divided according to population.

Zürich was required to give up
her league with foreign cities, as the Five Cantons had been compelled in 1529
to break their alliance with Austria. Thus all leagues with foreign powers,
whether papal or Protestant, were forbidden in Switzerland as unpatriotic.
Zürich had to refund the damages of two hundred and fifty crowns for war
expenses, and one hundred crowns for the family of Kaiser, which had been
imposed upon the Forest Cantons in 1529. Bern agreed in addition to pay three
thousand crowns for injury to property in the territory of Zug.

The two treaties of peace agree
in the principle of toleration (as far as it was understood in those days, and
forced upon the two parties by circumstances), but with the opposite
application to the neutral territory of the bailiwicks, where the Catholic
minority was protected against further aggression. The treaty of 1529 meant a
toleration chiefly in the interest and to the advantage of Protestantism; the
treaty of 1531, a toleration in the interest of Romanism.

§ 50. The Roman Catholic Reaction.

The Romanists reaped now the
full benefit of their victory. They were no longer disturbed by the aggressive
movements of Protestant preachers, and they regained much of the lost ground in
the bailiwicks.

Romanism was restored in
Rapperschwil and Gaster. The abbot of St. Gall regained his convent and heavy
damages from the city; Toggenburg had to acknowledge his authority, but a
portion of the people remained Reformed. Thurgau and the Rheinthal had to
restore the convents. Bremgarten 22 and Mellingen had to pledge themselves to
re-introduce the mass and the images. In Glarus, the Roman Catholic minority
acquired several churches and preponderating influence in the public affairs of
the Canton. In Solothurn, the Reformation was suppressed, in spite of the majority
of the population, and about seventy families were compelled to emigrate. In
the Diet, the Roman Cantons retained a plurality of votes.

The inhabitants of the Forest
Cantons, full of gratitude, made a devout pilgrimage to St. Mary of Einsiedeln,
where Zwingli had copied the Epistles of St. Paul from the first printed
edition of the Greek Testament in 1516, and where he, Leo Judae, and Myconius
had labored in succession for a reformation of abuses, with the consent of
Diepold von Geroldseck. That convent has remained ever since a stronghold of
Roman Catholic piety and superstition in Switzerland, and attracts as many
devout pilgrims as ever to the shrine of the "Black Madonna." It has one of the largest printing
establishments, which sends prayer-books, missals, breviaries, diurnals,
rituals, pictures, crosses, and crucifixes all over the German-speaking
Catholic world.298

Bullinger, who succeeded
Zwingli, closes his "History of the Reformation" mournfully, yet not
without resignation and hope. "All manner of tyranny and overbearance,"
he says, "is restored and strengthened, and an insolent régime is
working the ruin of the confederacy. Wonderful are the counsels of the Lord.
But he doeth all things well. To him be glory and praise! Amen."

NOTE ON THE CONVENT OF
EINSIEDELN.

(Comp. § 8, pp. 29 sqq.)

On a visit to Einsiedeln, June
12, 1890, I saw in the church a number of pilgrims kneeling before the
wonder-working statue of the Black Madonna. The statue is kept in a special
chapel, is coal-black, clothed in a silver garment, crowned with a golden
crown, surrounded by gilt ornaments, and holding the Christ-Child in her arms.
The black color is derived by some from the smoke of fire which repeatedly
consumed the church, while the statue is believed to have miraculously escaped;
but the librarian (Mr. Meier) told me that it was from the smoke of candles,
and that the face of the Virgin is now painted with oil.

The library of the abbey numbers
40,000 volumes (including 900 incunabula), among them several copies of the
first print of Zwingli’s Commentary on the true and false Religion, and
other books of his. In the picture-gallery are life-size portraits of King
Frederick William IV. of Prussia, his brother, the Prince of Prussia
(afterwards Emperor William I. of Germany), of Napoleon III. and Eugenie, of
the Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria and his wife, and their unfortunate son
who committed suicide in 1889, and of Pope Pius IX. These portraits were
presented to the convent on its tenth centenary in 1861. The convent was
founded by St. Meinhard, a hermit, in the ninth century, or rather by St.
Benno, who died there in 940. The abbey has now nearly 100 Benedictine monks, a
gymnasium with 260 pupils of twelve to twenty years, a theological seminary,
and two filial institutions in Indiana and Arkansas. The church is an imposing
structure, after the model of St. Peter’s in Rome, surrounded by colonnades.
The costly chandelier is a present of Napoleon III. (1865).

The wood-cut on p. 197
represents the abbey as it was before and at the time of Zwingli, and is a fair
specimen of a rich mediaeval abbey, with church, dwellings for the brethren,
library, school, and gardens. Einsiedeln lies in a dreary and sterile district,
and derives its sole interest from this remarkable abbey.

§ 51. The Relative Strength of the Confessions in Switzerland.

We may briefly sum up the result
of the Reformation in Switzerland as follows: —

Seven Cantons—Luzern, Uri,
Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Freiburg, and Soluthurn (Soleur)—remained firm to the
faith of their ancestors. Four Cantons, including the two strongest—Zürich,
Bern, Basel, and Schaffhausen—adopted the Reformed faith. Five Cantons—Glarus,
St. Gall, Appenzell, Thurgau, and Aargau—are nearly equally divided between the
two Confessions. Of the twenty-three subject towns and districts, only Morat
and Granson became wholly Protestant, sixteen retained their former religion,
and five were divided. In the Grisons nearly two-thirds of the population
adopted the Zwinglian Reformation; but the Protestant gains in the Valtellina
and Chiavenna were lost in the seventeenth century. Ticino and Wallis are Roman
Catholic. In the French Cantons—Geneva, Canton de Vaud, and Neuchatel—the
Reformation achieved a complete victory, chiefly through the labors of Calvin.

Since the middle of the
sixteenth century the numerical relation of the two Churches has undergone no
material change. Protestantism has still a majority of about half a million in
a population of less than three millions. The Roman Catholic Church has considerably
increased by immigration from Savoy and France, but has suffered some loss by
the Old Catholic secession in 1870 under the lead of Bishop Herzog. The
Methodists and Baptists are making progress chiefly in those parts where
infidelity and indifferentism reign.

Each Canton still retains its
connection with one or the other of the two Churches, and has its own church
establishment; but the bond of union has been gradually relaxed, and religious
liberty extended to dissenting communions, as Methodists, Baptists, Irvingites,
and Old Catholics. The former exclusiveness is abolished, and the principle of
parity or equality before the law is acknowledged in all the Cantons.

An impartial comparison between
the Roman Catholic and the Reformed Cantons reveals the same difference as
exists between Southern and Northern Ireland, Eastern and Western Canada, and
other parts of the world where the two Churches meet in close proximity. The
Roman Catholic Cantons have preserved more historical faith and superstition,
churchly habits and customs; the Protestant Cantons surpass them in general
education and intelligence, wealth and temporal prosperity; while in point of
morality both are nearly equal.

§ 52. Zwingli. Redivivus.

The last words of the dying
Zwingli, "They may kill the body, but cannot kill the soul," have
been verified in his case. His body was buried with his errors and defects, but
his spirit still lives; and his liberal views on infant salvation, and the
extent of God’s saving grace beyond the limits of the visible Church, which
gave so much offence in his age, even to the Reformers, have become almost
articles of faith in evangelical Christendom.

Ulrich Zwingli is, next to
Martin Luther and John Knox, the most popular among the Reformers.299He moved in sympathy with the
common people; he spoke and wrote their language; he took part in their public
affairs; he was a faithful pastor of the old and young, and imbedded himself in
their affections; while Erasmus, Melanchthon, Oecolampadius, Calvin, Beza, and
Cranmer stood aloof from the masses. He was a man of the people and for the
people, a typical Swiss; as Luther was a typical German. Both fairly
represented the virtues and faults of their nation. Both were the best hated as
well as the best loved men of their age, according to the faith which divided,
and still divides, their countrymen.

Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli
have been honored by a fourth centennial commemoration of their birth,—the one
in 1883, the other in 1884. Such honor is almost without a precedent, at least
in the history of theology.300

The Zwingli festival was not
merely an echo of the Luther festival, but was observed throughout the Reformed
churches of Europe and America with genuine enthusiasm, and gave rise to an
extensive Zwingli literature. It is in keeping with the generous Christian
spirit which the Swiss Reformer showed towards the German Reformer at Marburg,
that many Reformed churches in Switzerland, as well as elsewhere, heartily
united in the preceding jubilee of Luther, forgetting the bitter controversies
of the sixteenth century, and remembering gratefully his great services to the
cause of truth and liberty.301

In the following year (Aug. 25,
1885), a bronze statue was erected to Zwingli at Zürich in front of the
Wasserkirche and City Library, beneath the minster where be preached. It
represents the Reformer as a manly figure, looking trustfully up to heaven,
with the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other,—a combination true to
history. Dr. Alexander Schweizer, one of the ablest Swiss divines (d. July 3,
1888), whose last public service was the Zwingli oration in the University,
Jan. 7, 1884, protested against the sword, and left the committee on the
monument. Dr. Konrad Ferdinand Meyer, the poet of the occasion, changed the
sword of Zwingli, with poetic ingenuity, into the sword of Vokinger, by which
he was slain.302 Antistes
Finsler, in his oration, gave the sword a double meaning, as in the case of
Paul, who is likewise represented with the sword, namely, the sword by which he
was slain, and the sword of the spirit with which he still is fighting; while
at the same time it distinguishes Zwingli from Luther, and shows him as the
patriot and statesman.

The whole celebration—the orderly enthusiasm of the
people, the festive addresses of representative men of Church and State, the
illumination of the city and the villages around the beautiful lake—bore
eloquent witness to the fact that Zwingli has impressed his image indelibly
upon the memory of German Switzerland. Although his descendants are at present
about equally divided between orthodox conservatives and rationalistic
"reformers" (as they call themselves), they forgot their quarrels on
that day, and cordially united in tributes to the abiding merits of him who,
whatever were his faults, has emancipated the greater part of Switzerland from
the tyranny of popery, and led them to the fresh fountain of the teaching and
example of Christ.303

*Schaff, Philip, History of
the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997.
This material has been carefully compared, corrected¸ and emended (according to
the 1910 edition of Charles Scribner's Sons) by The Electronic Bible Society,
Dallas, TX, 1998.

255 For the particulars of this case see Mörikofer, II. 146 sqq., and Christoffel,
I. 376 sq.

256 The Reislaufen, or running to war; reisig, in old German, means ready for
war (kriegsrüstig).

260 Cappel has become famous by the battle of 1531 and the death of
Zwingli. It lies six miles from the town of Zug. The battlefield and the
monument of Zwingli are about ten minutes’ walk from Cappel. The old church is
well preserved, and has recently been repaired. See Annales Coenobii Capelloni per
H. Bullingerum et P. Simlerum, in Simler’s (printed) Sammilung
alter und neuer Urkunden (Zürich, 1760), II. 397; and Pestalozzi’s Bullinger, p. 20.

261 It is stated by Bullinger, and usually supposed, that he only went
in the capacity of chaplain, like Konrad Schmid and Franz Zingg, who likewise
preached in the army. The armor seems to indicate the warrior, as Hagenbach
thinks (p. 405), but not necessarily. There is no evidence that Zwingli
actually fought in any battle. A. Baur (Zwingli’s Theologie, II. 759)
says that he went to war simply as patriot and chaplain, not as politician and
captain. It is difficult, however, to separate these characters in him. The
weapons of Zwingli—a harness, a helmet, and a sword—were kept in the arsenal at
Luzern till 1848 in the Sonderbundskrieg, when they were carried to
Zürich.

262 They addressed each other "Gevatter," "gossip,
" which denotes a baptismal relationship. When Zwingli was pastor at
Glarus, he stood sponsor to Aebli’s children in baptism.

263 Similar episodes of kindly intercourse occurred between the
Confederate and Union soldiers during the civil war in the United States.

269 This is a free version of H. White (from Merle D’Aubigné), with
some necessary changes. The original, in the Swiss German, was sung at the
Zwingli festivals in 1884, and, with great effect, at the unveiling of the
Zwingli statue in Zürich, August, 1885. It is as follows:-

275 Zwingli sent an answer to the German princes assembled at
Augsburg, dated Aug. 27, 1530. Opera, IV. 19-41.

276 The Anabaptists are condemned (damnant) in Art. IX., the Zwinglians are disapproved (improbant) in Art. X., of the Augsburg
Confession. See Melanchthon’s Judicium de Zwinglii doctrina, written at Augsburg, July 25,
1530, in "Corpus Reform," II. 222 sq.

283 Bullinger, III. 130, gives the names. The total number of the
slain and mortally wounded Zürichers was five hundred and fourteen, while the
Five Cantons lost only about eighty. The leaders of the army, Georg Göldli and
Lavater, escaped, and were charged, the first with treason, the other with
incompetency.

290 Der armen Frow Zwinglin Klag, published in the
"Alpenrosen," Bern, 1820, p. 273; in Zwingli’s Werke, II. B.
281; also in Christoffel, I. 413, and Mörikofer, II. 517. After giving vent to
her woe, Anna Zwingli resorts to the Bible, which was her husband’s comfort,
and was to be hers. I select the first and the last of the fourteen stanzas of
this poem, which Mörikofer numbers among "the imperishable monuments of
the great man."

1. "O
Herre Gott, wie heftig shluog

Mich dynes Zornes Ruthen!

Du armes Herz, ist’s nit genuog,

Kannst du noch nicht verbluoten?

Ich ring die Hand:

Käm’ doch myn End!

Wer nag myn Elendfassen?

Wer misst die Not ?

Myn Gott, Myn Gott,

Hast du mich gar verlassen ?

14. "Komm
du, o Buoch du warst syn Hort,

Syn Trost in allem Uebel.

Ward er verfolgt mit That und
Wort,

So griff er nach der Bibel,

Fand Hilf bei ihr.

Herr, zeige mir

Die Hilf in Jesu Namen!

Gib Muoth und Stärk

Zum schweren Werk

Dem schwachen Wybe! Amen ."

291 Mrs. Meta Heusser (d. 1876), the most gifted Swiss poetess, who
lived a few miles from Cappel, wrote two beautiful poems for the dedication of
the monument, Oct. 11, 1838, which are printed in the first series of her Lieder,
pp. 189 sqq. I quote the first stanza of the second poem:—

293 In his letter to Albrecht of Prussia, April, 1532 (in De Wette,
IV. 348-355), Luther expresses a doubt about Zwingli’s salvation (on account of
his denial of the corporal presence). He scorns the idea that he was a martyr;
he regrets that the Catholic Cantons did not complete their victory by
suppressing the Zwinglian heresy, and he warns the Duke of Prussia not to
tolerate it in his dominion. In his furious polemic tract, Short Confession
of the Holy Sacrament, written in 1645, a year before his death (Werke,
Erlangen ed., vol. XXXII. 399-401, 410), Luther says that "Zwingel"
(he always misspells his name) and Oecolampadius "perished in their
sins"; that Zwingli died "in great and many sins and blasphemy"
( in grossen und vielen Sünden und Gotteslästerung), having expressed a hope for
the salvation of such "gottlose Heiden" as Socrates, Aristides,
and the "greuliche Numa" that he became a heathen; and
that he perished by the sword because he took up the sword. He adds that he,
Martin Luther, "would rather a hundred times be torn to pieces and burned
than make common cause with Stenkefeld [Stinkfeld for Schwenkfeld], Zwingel,
Carlstadt, and Oeclampadius!" O sancta simplicitas! How different
is the conduct and judgment of Zwingli, who, at Marburg, with tears in his
eyes, offered the hand of brotherhood to his great antagonist, and who said of
him in the very heat of the eucharistic controversy: "Luther is so
excellent a warrior of God, and searches the Scriptures with such great
earnestness as no one on earth for these thousand years has done; and no one
has ever equalled him in manly, unshaken spirit with which he has attacked the
pope of Rome. He was the true David whom the Lord himself appointed to slay
Goliath. He hurled the stones taken from the heavenly brook so skilfully that
the giant fell prostrate on the ground. Saul has slain thousands, but David
tens of thousands. He was the Hercules who rushed always to the post of danger
in battle ... Therefore we should justly thank God for having raised such an
instrument for his honor; and this we do with pleasure."

294 Christoffel, I. 409. Comp. also the beautiful preface of Zwingli
to the history of the passion, in which he shows his readiness to die for
Christ, quoted by Mörikofer, II. 415.

295 The Swiss Sonderbunds-Krieg was an anticipation, on a small
scale, of the Civil War in the United States, though the causes were different.
In both cases the confederates rebelled against the federal government, and
sought the aid of their hereditary enemy; the Swiss of the Catholic Forest
Cantons that of Austria, the Americans of the slaveholding Southern States that
of England. For a clear sketch of the Sonderbunds-Krieg, see Vuillemin, Geschichte
der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft (1882), pp. 517-537.

298 The firm of "Benziger Brothers, Printers to the Holy
Apostolic See," Einsiedeln, New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago. The various
illustrated catalogues of this establishment give an idea of the immense extent
of its operations.

300 I say "almost." In 1880, five hundred years after the
completion of Wiclif’s English Bible, his memory was celebrated throughout the
English-speaking Protestant world in five continents. The sixth centenary of
Dante’s birth was celebrated in 1865 in Florence and all Italy. The last divine
whose centennial birthday was observed is Neander, the Church historian. An
eloquent commemorative oration was delivered on that occasion by Dr. Harnack,
his successor, in the Aula of the University of Berlin, Jan. 17, 1889.

301 See the literature on the Zwingli centennial in § 5, pp. 17 sq.
and the literature of the Luther celebration in vol. VI. 104 sq. and 730.

303 See an account of that memorable celebration (which I witnessed
myself) in Erinnerungsblätter zur Einweihung des
Zwingli-Denkmals in Zürich. Herausqegeben vom Denkmal-Komite. In 2 parts, Zürich, 1885. The
chief address was made by Antistes Finsler, the twenty-second successor of
Zwingli. A part of the celebration was a dramatic representation of Zwingli’s
death (a historic tragedy by Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer), and a banquet in the
Tonhalle-Pavilion, where addresses were delivered by delegates from different
Cantons. Zwingli’s poem, "Herr, nun heb den Wagen selbst," was sung with great
spirit by the Concordia. The Swiss poet, Dr. Meyer, wrote the Festcantate.
The statue was made by Natter, a Roman Catholic sculptor of Vienna, who
attended the unveiling. A significant fact.